To find Halloween utterly tedious?

[TheGigglingGazelle]

Just that, really. I get why it's fun for kids, but grown adults getting excited about it, and the way everything that happens any time around Hallowe'en has to have a 'spooky' theme? casts a sidelong glance at Strictly while typing Each to their own, but... I just don't get it.

Is it just me?

Is it such a bad thing though? It’s just a bit of fun surely?

Halloween is the only time of year I answer my front door - with my flamethrower...

Bah Humbug! It's fun to dress up and embrace the spooky side of life, lighten up and carve a pumpkin 🎃

Halloween is and always has been my favourite day of the year! We go all out decorating the house, stock up on plenty of sweets, and dress up for answering the door. I love seeing how amused everyone is by our decorations (especially the kids, who are enthralled by the motion activated ones!), chatting to everyone who walks by, the general excitement in the air, seeing all the different costumes, etc.
Honestly everything about it makes me really happy, but if it’s not your thing that’s fair enough. Like you, I guess I’ll just never truly understand why!

Why are people miserable fuckers for not enjoying what has become a plastic tat money making celebration where people knock on strangers doors asking for sweets?

I enjoyed the Halloween of my childhood where you went to people you know, no plastic tat, nice community feeling. I don't like what it is now in many places and I don't like repeated door knocking when I've clearly got no decorations to have random strangers demand sweets.
I usually have a few sweets for the neighbors i know and their children's friends when they come round early on, but after 7ish I'm not answering.

YABTotallyU.

I bloody love Halloween! This festival is a part of our history and America can thank us for the export!

Personally, I'm delighted that we're moving away from the suspicion and prejudice against pagan festivals and becoming more open to non-Christian celebrations in this country.

Of course, America are waaaay ahead in observance, but it's good to see the UK theme parks joining in and holding Fright Nights. We're doing Thorpe Park this year (Alton Towers is excellent too and Chessington is great for young ones). The US Disney and Universal Halloween nights are unbeatable though.

There's an undeniable frisson in the air during this time of change, why not embrace it?

Growing up in Ireland, a massive deal was made of Halloween. Not quite as much as Christmas, but not far off. We, (perhaps for obvious reasons), did not celebrate bonfire night where I grew up, but Halloween was a big deal.

Actually, if I want to get really pedantic about it, Halloween is much more traditional than bonfire night which is a lot more recent and more 'made up' (by the King) than Halloween which was a Christian festival, long before Guy Fawkes was even a twinkle in his parents' eyes! Before that, it was probably a pagan festival, as most Christian festivals seem to be.

I love how it is celebrated in Mexico as well. It's a global holiday. Celebrating by burning effigies every year of a man who was tortured to death a few hundred years ago is generally considered weird IME to anyone not from England.

So, YABU.

Personally, I'm delighted that we're moving away from the suspicion and prejudice against pagan festivals and becoming more open to non-Christian celebrations in this country.

Sorry to break it to you, but the origins of Halloween are both pagan and Christian. Pagan first though, just like Christmas and Easter.

Oh I despair! Do Halloween-celebrating folk actually realise that this is not mutually celebrated? It really irks me and many others. I grew up in the sixties and seventies. This single use plastic celebration of what we ACTUALLY don’t stand for is bonkers. We tell our children not to accept sweets from strangers yet for one night a year we are actively encouraging them to ask for sweets from strangers. Oh my days.
Yes, somebody parents accompany their kids but the majority do not. It’s almost like.. the neighbourhood will babysit our kids. Yes I’m a curmudgeon about this but it really is a recent export from the US like Black Friday. We’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving next!!!

@1Morewineplease

It isn't an American import at all. Do some research ffs, before spouting nonsense.

I'm with you on single use plastics, but it's a bit much to blame that on Halloween. The commercialisation of Halloween is not really anything to do with the festival itself. Just like all the tat you can buy at Christmas isn't Christmas's fault.

My parents always closed the curtains and switched all of the lights off on Halloween. It's one of the overriding memories of my miserable childhood.

Same! So, despite finding Halloween rather tedious, I join in and get involved because my kids think it’s amazing. They’re thrilled to give out cheap sweets and lollies at the door, thrilled to bits to dress up, they are in their element and I think kids are under so much pressure these days. It’s nice to see them just be ridiculous and silly for once, and to join them.

Do Halloween-celebrating folk actually realise that this is not mutually celebrated

Its fucking obvious to be honest

This thread has lots of people who don’t celebrate...there will be other threads (like every year) full of people who don’t celebrate...lots of my friends don’t celebrate

I appreciate @BeatriceTheBeast that you feel that Halloween isn’t an American import but in the 60s and 70s ( even 80s , to a certain extent) Trick or Treating wasn’t usual.
I have done my research on this , thank you, and Trick or Treating is quite a new phenomenon in British history, however, the remembrance of All Hallows’’ Eve does go back for centuries. ( it never involved asking people for sweets!)
As to your “ffs” thank you very much indeed.

Halloween is wank. Bonfire Night is ace.

1morewine

Halloween is not new

Trick or treating may well be, but your post was about Halloween as a whole...not one specific part of it

(Although obviously we had guising)

I never went trick or treating or guising as a child...we certainly ‘did’ Halloween

@1Morewineplease do you live in England? People have been guising in Scotland for a very long time. Sweets are new, yes. Guising isn't - I used to get monkey nuts and tangerines actually (and some chocolate). I'll ask my mum what she used to get tomorrow.
Things have of course evolved, like all traditions.

Teach your kids begging from door to door. Disgusting.

@1Morewineplease

Trick or treating isn't something I go in for. It's absolutely fine to say that is an American import, but don't be so ignorant as to call a very old festival, which is celebrated the world, over a "new American import". That is simply inaccurate.

People who say this while also saying the true tradition is bonfire night, which really is relatively new and made up, need to do some research. Anywhere outside Little England, very few people celebrate bonfire night.

So, maybe you understand my exasperation when, time and time again, people crop up on these threads at this time of year to pontificate at how traditional and proppa bonfire night is compared to the 'American' Halloween. That's why I said FFS. If you think that's in some way offensive, I suggest you report it to MNHQ, who I'm sure will look into it for you.

@verysadstorync Yes I fully appreciate that the lovely folk of Scotland go guising, I’m just a tad sad that six year olds get dressed up like a character from’Halloween’ or ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and knock on people’s door asking for sweeties else they’ll spray silly string.
I have no compunction with proper traditionan but I have a lot of empathy with very old folk, like my own mum, who get frightened of endless knocks on their door from children expecting sweets when these folk are often unable to shop for them or not be able to afford them, they’ll feel that if they say no , they’ll get punished. Having been a helper for the elderly, I KNOW, how scared they get.
I appreciate that most children only go to houses where there’s a pumpkin glowing , but round these parts , it doesn’t stop them if there’s a pumpkin or not. Old folk get scared. They worry that they’ll have something bad happen.

@BeatriceTheBeast I simply said that ‘Trick or Treating ‘ was relatively new to British culture , not Halloween , which many folk have celebrated for centuries.
Why are you talking about Bonfire Night... separate event?!
And “proppa” is spelled “ proper.”

Christianity piggy-backed Samhain in much the same way as it did Yule @BeatriceTheBeast, so don't fret about breaking any news to me about the modern day festival. It's actually closer to the Catholic Day of the Dead in its intent but I'm pretty sure its ties to the church are minimal nowadays.

@1MoreWinePlease, we definitely trick or Treated in London in the 70s.

@Willow2017

Absolutely agree with everything you said. Christmas is way more f-ing tedious than Halloween.

Halloween is usually one day, sometimes stretches a bit if it’s on a weekend, yet I have to hear, read, and see about Christmas for a good chunk of the bloody year. Even after Christmas is over, there is crap on the telly about saving for next year 🙄. The stress that people put on Christmas alone and figuring out who to see boggles my mind and even more ridiculous that people get upset over who doesn’t come on said day when there is Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. Think there were even threads about this in Late-September. I think the thing that bugs me the most is people choosing to be nicer and kinder because it’s Christmas when they could have been doing that all year round.

Also, the anti-American crap here is ridiculous. The US is a pretty young nation compared to most European countries and if it wasn’t for immigration, we wouldn’t have Halloween in the first place. Besides, it’s not like the US is the only country that celebrates Halloween.

We’re child free by choice and in our late 40s so Trick or Treat wasn’t a thing when we were kids.

Despite that we LOVE kids coming to trick or treat. I think a festival where grown ups give treats to neighbourhood kids even if they don’t know personally them is a lovely thing.

This whole OTT "celebration" isn't part of UK culture. It's yet another American import that retailers have jumped on and some people have fallen for the money-making exercise. No idea why. Perhaps because sadly many people are sheep and suffer from FOMO.

Or perhaps people just find it fun. And you're rude.